


Trees in Winter: A Chronicle from the Age of Golden Leaves

by StarlightAsteria



Series: There is no turning back [3]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Angst, As They Appear - Freeform, Epic Poetry, F/M, High Stakes, Jaime Lannister is King of the West, Meta, More Relationships to be added, More characters to be added, Music, Peregryne is one snarky academic, Romance, Sansa Stark is Queen in the North, TINTB-verse, appendices, bard-spies, oral histories, this is what Sansa's bard-spies are busy writing in TINTB, troubadours
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-02-22
Updated: 2020-02-22
Packaged: 2021-02-27 18:35:51
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,683
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22850335
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/StarlightAsteria/pseuds/StarlightAsteria
Summary: Written by Dafning of Thenn, chronicler-official to the courts of Winterfell and Casterly Rock during the most legendary reigns of Sansa Stark, Queen in the North, and Jaime Lannister, King of the West.critical ed. by Peregryne Lorren, Professor of Poetry and Rhetoric at the New University of Lannisportaka a compilation of what Sansa's bard-spies are up to in "There is no turning back", combined with some historical analysis, academic marginalia, and meditations on how reputations are made and then evolve throughout history.
Relationships: Arthur Dayne & Jaime Lannister, Jaime Lannister/Sansa Stark
Series: There is no turning back [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1225214
Comments: 45
Kudos: 77





	1. FOREWORD

**Author's Note:**

> I have had so much fun working on this! I hope you lovely people enjoy it!
> 
> And never fear, I am working on the next instalment of TINTB-proper.

* * *

FOREWORD

* * *

_That the reigns of Sansa Stark and Jaime Lannister made an end to the long-running, disastrous and incredibly destructive feud between their two ancient ruling houses is a matter of established historical record. An alliance, a love match, between a man and a woman whose lives had up until that point evolved in remarkably similar ways: each was held prisoner at the hands of a member of the opposite family, each was at various points tortured and manipulated and abused. From hatred and despair they forged love, in service of two subsequent threats in common. First came the war against the Night King, and then, upon the heels of that unexpected victory, a second war against the Dragon Queen, ushering in a reign of unprecedented cultural flourishing._

_I have long held as a personal academic interest the poetry of the reigns of Sansa Stark and Jaime Lannister. Justly discussed as literature, they have not, I was surprised to discover in the course of my research, all been published in one seminal volume, though the chronicler Dafning of Thenn at the time, was careful enough to record all them all. It seemed to me that there was space to elaborate upon the discrepancies that exist between manuscripts that have come down to us, all these thousands of years later. There are no extant manuscripts from the time; our earliest record is from 570 A. C., so almost three hundred years after Sansa Stark and Jaime Lannister’s reign._

_The_ Chronicle _is a compilation of poetry recording the reigns of Jaime Lannister and Sansa Stark, composed by multiple bards, compiled by the official court chronicler Dafning of Thenn, and his addendums tend towards the dry but useful dating of significant events, and recording the nobles present. The_ Chronicle _functions also as an introduction to the famed cultural figures of the age, not least of whom is the Queen herself, renowned as a musician and composer and singer of some significant talent, but also the likes of Lady Essabel Marbrand of Ashemark, daughter to the King’s most brilliant military commander Ser Addam Marbrand, known in literary circles as Essabel of Ashemark, following the cultural conventions of the time. Emric the Wildling’s_ The Lion, the Star, and the Walker’s White ( _p24 of this edition) is to this day one of the country’s most popular folk songs, given the star treatment by classical composers and contemporary pop stars alike. According to Dafning of Thenn, it began life as a drinking song amongst the King’s soldiers and bannermen in the aftermath of the Fourth Battle of Winterfell, wherein the Night King was finally defeated._

_This first manuscript - Torrhen’s Square A - is astonishingly complete; missing only are the collection of letters between the two monarchs, whose existence Dafning of Thenn was certainly aware of, though I think it unlikely that he ever clapped eyes upon that private correspondence._

_Indeed it only became the norm from around A.C800 to add to Dafning of Thenn’s_ Chronicle of Songs from the Age of Golden Leaves _the hundreds of surviving letters between the two monarchs; I have therefore followed this long-established practice in_ Trees in Winter. _To better provoke in the reader and the student opportunities for reflection; the letters are not organised in a separate section to the songs. Rather, I have, where it has been possible to determine time-frames, placed the letters following the corresponding song. The rest of the letters follow in a compilation at the end of the volume._

_To the academic the songs are not only to be enjoyed as poetry, but they also work hard to establish the King and Queen’s reputation as particularly competent and beloved monarchs. But where these particular records differ from our records of other reigns, both earlier and later, is that not only was Sansa Stark particularly adept at following the tradition of her husband’s house of using music as a political weapon: she also went further, as some of her correspondence with the King of the West shows us. She cultivated throughout her entire adult life a vast, complex and frighteningly efficient network of bard-spies, to the point that contemporaneous records from Braavos - specifically from the Iron Bank and from the House of Black and White, that secretive legion of assassins - make more than one admiring mention of her spies._

_This lowly academic has not the permission from the Secret Services to study the ciphers the Queen in the North used, which are classified information even in these modern times, but the picture painted by Dafning of Thenn is vivid enough: she would decipher her reports using music, and compose ex tempore her replies and orders. In this light, it becomes entertaining to speculate the reasons for the differences accounted between the manuscripts. Whilst our earliest, is, as stated above, some 300 hundred years post-reign, it does make numerous references to earlier manuscripts, sadly lost to us, as do the later manuscripts - especially the manuscripts from the Casterly Rock and Winterfell collections, which are understandably amongst the best preserved. Indeed, both libraries at Casterly Rock and Winterfell have for thousands of years taken their roles seriously as principal custodians of the songs and indeed all archives from the reigns of Sansa Stark and Jaime Lannister, with the stunning results that we see today: the_ Chronicle _as a whole is studied across the country in history and literature classes, and many of the figures from that time - Essabel of Ashemark, Robar of Runestone, Emric the Wildling, to name but a few - form part of the country’s literary canon, over two thousand years later._

_Peregryne Lorren, Prof._

_New University of Lannisport_

_Lannisport, A.C. 2542_

* * *


	2. North, to frost and stars: Essabel of Ashemark, circa AC304 - 10

* * *

I 

_North, to frost and stars_

_Written by Essabel, Lady of Ashemarkc. AC.304 - 10_

* * *

_Alack, alack!_ Said the lover betrayed

_Not for me is love, not for me is life._

_I’ll North, to frost and stars and there to die._

For ‘gainst an ancient evil he’d vowed his soldier’s trade.

More than lover, more than knight - a Lannister!

A Lion, gold of hair and gold of hand, riding North and there to die,

For ‘gainst the fell-footed demons he’d pledged his aid.

_I am free,_ sighed the Goldenhand, _free from my sister -_

_And yet miss her I shall, that hateful witch - my sister._

The Lion thought to ride and fight and die alone,

To face foes of old, once forgotten, and ‘neath th’ancient trees -

For his sins, confess and purged of these, atone -

But the Men of the West - proud, and to play the villains

Truly ill-inclined, pursued their Liege.

They found him near the river -

At his back lay Trident the Great

Deep and dark as shades and shivers

For thousands the horrid grave:

The Stranger’s tribute, the soldier’s fate.

_Sire!_ Cried the Wester-men, _of this avoidance no more!_

_Art thou not our King? Art thou not our Lord?_

_Not the Witch of the West, nor the Dragon from the East._

_This of the Age is the War, and we would march at the fore._

_If North and there to fight, if there to die,_

_We will with thee, and in th’eternal snows our bones to lie._

And so the Lion, in the manner of the Kings of old acclaimed,

Turned North his noble destrier, heartened and resolved,

His host thundering the earth, justly for their valour famed.

North, to frost and stars, and there to fight

North, to snow and song, and there to die

And in th’eternal snows their bones to lie.

* * *

Critical Notes.

The _Chronicle_ broadly organises its songs in a chronological fashion. Not much is known about Jaime Lannister prior to the events set out in this song, unfortunately. Dafning makes numerous references in his addendums in the _Chronicle_ to prior events which would have been widely known to his contemporary audience; most notably detailing the events which led to him being given the epithets of Kingslayer and Goldenhand, but of his childhood and the years between his gaining of the two epithets, we regrettably know very little. One of Dafning’s most frequent references is to something known as the _White Book_ , detailing the lives and exploits of the Kingsguard during the three turbulent centuries of Targaryen rule. To our understanding there was only ever one copy made, and it appears to have been lost when the Dragon Queen sacked the city with an army of Dothraki horsemen and indentured slave-soldiers known as the Unsullied:

_(Loro of Myrin AC1547 argues that they were given this name because the slave-masters castrated them; Khal Maro, two centuries later, famous for his reparational academic researches into the warmongering old Dothraki ways, in which violently enslaving entire cities was all too common, and the principal source of slaves for cities such as Ghis and Meereen, by contrast argues that he has not found any extant documentation supporting Loro of Myr’s claims. Khal Moro hypothesises that the lack of documentation stems from the Dragon Queen’s campaigns in Meereen and the surrounding cities, which caused substantial internecine warfare. This would appear partially corroborated by the Iron Bank who in their records lament the burning down of the libraries in those cities at the time. What we do know was that the Unsullied formed a substantial part of Daenerys Targaryen’s armies in the early years of the fourth century (circa AC303-5) when she invaded Westeros.)_

Returning to Jaime Lannister, there have been all manner of rumours surrounding his life in the years AC283 ( _the aftermath of Robert’s Rebellion AC281-3_ ) to AC304, the date in which he rides North to Winterfell, and the year of the beginning of his reign over the West, seceding his lands from his sister, who at that time claimed dominion over the Iron Throne in King’s Landing. We do not know the name of this sister; what is certain is that she is not buried in the Lannister crypts at Casterly Rock, and any mention of her has been erased from the Lannister archives, and nor does she appear anywhere else. Records from the Iron Bank with whom Jaime’s sister had dealings simply refer to her as CL, Queen in King’s Landing.

Numerous academics have speculated that the first two stanzas of the above song, _North, to frost and stars,_ conflate Jaime Lannister’s sister with his lover. This has led to a perennial debate, principally between historians and literary academics. The former argue that there is no reliable documentary evidence for the existence of an incestuous relationship between Jaime Lannister and his sister. The latter argue that the lines are "so ambiguous as to render such an interpretation rather obvious" _(See Dr Milo de Florean, "Forbidden Love in Poetry" at the Citadel at Oldtown)._ I would refer you to the obvious contradiction between the words _ambiguous_ and _obvious,_ and happily rest my case. 

Nevertheless, for those amongst you who require historical corroboration of my argument, as indeed you all should, the only mentions of incest between Jaime Lannister and his sister are in letters between a Loras Tyrell and his grandmother, who supported Renly Baratheon, the youngest of King Robert's brothers, in a bid for the Iron Throne during the War of the Five Kings in the early AC300s, against Robert Baratheon’s son, Joffrey, King of the Thousand Days. The Loras Tyrell letter is suspect for several reasons: it comes from someone for whom it would have been rather convenient that this incestuous relationship indeed existed. In a later letter to his grandmother, the same Loras Tyrell accuses Stannis Baratheon of having killed Renly with black magic and a shadow in the night. A dagger after dark is perhaps more prosaic, but infinitely more likely. It is therefore the historical consensus ( _see Garlan Tarrant, Moserling, Feona Yrondy, et al)_ that Loras Tyrell had a talent for fabrication, and that any accusations of incest between Jaime Lannister and his unnamed sister are likely exaggerated. 

Far more interesting, in my opinion, is that she is unnamed. Certainly, that she is absent from the family crypts, absent from any sort of record ( _unlike her sons with Robert Baratheon, the Kings Joffrey and Tommen, whom records at the Citadel in Oldtown state were buried in King’s Landing, as befitting their royal status, though the tomb of the former was most likely destroyed during Daenerys Targaryen’s sacking of the city in late AC304_ ) combined with Jaime Lannister’s secession of the West from his _sister,_ presents a possible interpretation that there was some issue with her as a ruler, or, failing that, that his relationship with her was particularly antagonistic, something which further discredits the incest theory. Whether a fault of character, malice, or simple ineptitude we do not know. Certainly such gaps in the timeline provide ample space for sensationalist tv shows to run amok with all manner of theories, none of which have any sort of basis in proven historical fact. To me, this is a primary example of poetry interpretation straying indefensibly far from the source material. It might be sexier fodder for a dramatic retelling, no pun intended, than what we can corroborate with historical records, but that does not make it worth defending in an academic context, in my opinion.

As for the style of the actual song; it is a peculiarity of the Westerlander style of poetry in the early AC300s ( _up until around AC320, it is safe to say, when Robar of Runestone explodes onto the scene and direct-speech is definitively consigned to the wastepaper basket of poetry for the next nine hundred years_ ) is the inclusion of direct speech, fabricated by the poet. In the early manuscripts, this is represented by the direct-speech text being underlined in ink, barring in the AC594 Casterly Rock-A, where the same text is underlined with gold leaf. Another peculiarity of theWinterfell and Casterly Rock courts in the reign of Sansa Stark and Jaime Lannister seems to be that the _writing and composing_ of poetry, whether epic or lyric, seems to have been the prerogative of the noble woman in the West, and the noble man, especially in the Vale and amongst the Wildlings, at least at the beginning of the reign, something else which helps us date the works, as it is rather easy, once the naming conventions are understood, to visit the crypt of that noble house, find the appropriate gravestone, and calculate accordingly - at least that was what work the early academics and historians were required to do.

Luckily, for us modern folk, for the past seven hundred and fifty-four years the National Libraries at Casterly Rock, Winterfell, Riverrun,and Runestone, and the University libraries at Oldtown, Starfall and Hardhome, have collated all of these records, so research only requires a short visit to an archive, or indeed now that said archives are in the process of being digitised, a short period of time digging through the appropriate online databases.

Characteristic, too, of this early AC300s Westerlander style, is the repetition of lines to haunting, melancholy effect. Indeed most of the writing from this region and period tends towards the melancholy, from the mid-250s when according to chronicles the feud between the Mad King and Lord Tywin Lannister, the Goldenhand’s formidable sire, intensified to something rather nasty, all the way through to Jaime’s accession in AC304 and the Siege at Casterly Rock. Prevalent in the work of Essabel of Ashemark, of Leonor of Feastfires is an overarching sense of melancholy, of an inevitable ending, an evolution of the most famous song from that period perhaps in the entire continent, the Lannister war anthem, _The Rains of Castamere,_ which, according to local legend, was composed by Tywin Lannister’s younger sister, the Lady Genna Lannister. _The Rains of Castamere_ is a warning, grim with determination, that carries with it as well a preoccupation with being remembered, made explicit in the fifth stanza of _North, to frost and stars: This of the Age is the War, and we would march at the fore./ If North and there to fight, if there to die, / We will with thee, and in th’eternal snows our bones to lie._

* * *

**Author's Note:**

> Thoughts?


End file.
